Friday, February 13, 2009

Stolen Money Pays for Madoff's Penthouse Incarceration?

Scott Paltrow has an intriguing article on Portfolio.com today, describing the possible culpability of other members of the Bernie Madoff familyin his $50 billion swindle. Yesterday, the Massaschusetts attorney general charged that the missus, Ruth Madoff, withdrew funds just before the scam was disclosed.

What this adds up to is more than Mrs. Madoff possibly needing her own lawyer. It means that the entire Bernie Madoff "single crook" story has a good likelihood of being a crock. And, as nightmare follows day, that again raises a gnawing question: why is Bernie Madoff confined in a penthouse and not at Metropolitan Correctional Center?

The reason he's not eating stale baloney sandwiches at the MCC is that his wife can afford to pay for the round-the-clock monitoring that he requires to avoid incarceration. But it's increasingly clear that all that fancy prison-avoiding is paid for by stolen money.

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About Me

I'm a journalist and author. My latest book is AYN RAND NATION: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul (St. Martin's Press: Feb. 28, 2012). My previous books were Wall Street Versus America (Portfolio: 2006) and Born to Steal (Warner Books: 2003). I was an investigative reporter and Wall Street writer for BusinessWeek, a contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio, and have written for the Daily Beast, Parade magazine, Salon, The Street.com, Fortune.com, Barron's and many other publications. I was an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism. Follow me on Twitter @gary_weiss